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I wanted to stop feeling as though I were rotting in my own aimlessness, and I wanted my head to stop spinning all the time.
He is fully smiling now. He has a heart-stopping dimple on his left cheek, and . . . Okay, fine: he’s aggressively hot.
He is, very simply, a never-before-experienced mix of cute and overwhelmingly masculine. With a complex, layered air about him. It spells simultaneously Do not piss me off because I don’t fuck around and Ma’am, let me carry those groceries for you.
“Beautiful. You are very, very beautiful. Probably the most . . . And you’re obviously smart and funny, so . . .”
“I’m in love with your freckles,” I say, right before nipping at one on his jaw. “I thought about licking them the moment I saw you.”
“When I saw you, I—” I suck on the skin of his throat, and he stutters. “I thought you were a little too beautiful,”
“Hannah.” The shock of hearing my name—in Ian’s voice, cocooned by the whistle of the wind, and through the metallic line of my satphone, no less—has me instantly shutting up. Until he continues. “Just relax and think of Mars, okay? I’ll be there soon.”
He’s still staring at me. Like he’s found his long-missing house keys and is afraid he’ll lose them again if he looks away.
He smiles, and the thought that I could have died—I could have died—without being smiled at like this, by this man, has my lips trembling. “I don’t mind carrying you.” A dimple appears. “Do try to contain your love for crevasses, please.” I glare at him through the tears. As it turns out, it’s exactly what he wants from me.
He doesn’t hesitate. Or maybe he does, but just a fraction of a second. He opens his arms and pulls me to his chest, and . . . I fit inside them so perfectly, it’s as though there was a spot ready for me all along. A five-year-old spot, familiar and cozy. A delicious, warm nook that smells of soap and sleep, freckles and pale, sweaty skin.
He says it—you—like I am a remarkable and important thing. The most precious data point; his favorite town; the loveliest, starkest Martian landscape. Even though I pushed him away, over and over, he still came in a rocking boat in the middle of the coldest ocean on planet Earth, just to get me warm.
“Is that why you came to rescue me?” I tease. “Because you were thinking about it? Because you have been secretly pining for years?” He meets my eyes squarely. “I don’t know that there was anything secret about that.”
“Hannah, if that changes. If you ever find yourself able to believe that someone could care about you that much. And if you wanted to actually . . . have dinner with that someone.” He lets out a laugh. “Well . . . Please, consider me. You know where to find me.”
